The Heart Does Not Bend

by Makeda Silvera

  “What I’m saying, Rose, is that I’ll live with yuh, I’ll come, but ah need to settle things wid mi grandmother first, because she need mi help, yuh see that for yuhself, and then there is Ciboney.” Frustrated, I stopped there.

  “I understand,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I understand, but I don’t like it. I wanted you to choose me.”

  We made love through the night until a rose-tinted sunrise peered through the windows. By the weekend she’d found a one-bedroom apartment in the middle of the gay ghetto.

  Believing she had scored a victory, Mama was beside herself with joy. “Girl, yuh doing de right thing mek Rose go,” she said to me. “Nuh mek evil lead yuh astray. Dat …thing is so wicked dat inna Genesis 19, Lot offer him virgin daughter dem to some battyman radder dan give dem de decent man dem come fi get. Read dis, girl, it will help yuh through temptation,” she said, handing me her Bible open at Psalm 51. “And keep de Bible, sleep wid it under yuh pillow fi seven nights. Yuh will draw strength from it.”

  Despite Mama and the guilt I felt, Rose and I continued to see each other.

  Nine months from the day Rose moved out, Uncle Mel died. He passed away peacefully in his bed. I helped Mama make the funeral arrangements. We chose a casket and a burial suit, and planned a simple ceremony. It was a small funeral, just fifteen of us together in the chapel on a cold spring morning. Mama and I, Ciboney, Vittorio, Aunt Val, Uncle Peppie, his brother, Washington, and a few of Uncle Mel’s old friends. His sister, Gwen, had left Toronto several years earlier and didn’t come to the funeral. Rose attended, but briefly. Notable by their absence were Glory and Uncle Freddie. They sent condolences and wreaths, but they didn’t come. I don’t think Mama ever forgave them for that.

  When the will was read, we learned that Mel had left all his properties to Mama. It was little consolation. His death took a toll on her, though she never spoke about it, and not even the Lord Jesus could light up the house. She continued to go to church, though the arthritis in her knees worsened. Sometimes they would swell up like jackfruit. I massaged them with Tiger Balm to relieve the pain. For this, she was always grateful.

  One day her knees gave way completely. No longer able to go to church or do shopping, she had only her television and radio for comfort. Her failing health made her more dependent on me and put a strain on my relationship with Rose. I couldn’t see her as freely as I had before, and there were times I was sure Mama was listening in on our phone calls.

  Vittorio was hardly around. Immediately after Uncle Mel’s death, Mama gave Vittorio the money for a sports car. It was a way of holding on to him, of making sure he stuck around. I hated to see Vittorio and Ciboney driving around, so carefree, while Mama made excuses for why Vittorio didn’t have a job. It was always someone else’s fault.

  Whenever I could, I escaped to Rose’s place. But it didn’t take long for Rose to see that I was using her apartment to avoid facing the problems at home. She began to pressure me to make a decision.

  “Is time to move out—you is a big woman. Vittorio getting all the benefits from your grandmother. Move out and let him take up his responsibility. Bring Ciboney if you want. When you going to think about yourself and your happiness?”

  The truth was, I didn’t know how to leave. But I didn’t want to lose Rose, and she had begun talking about seeing other women. I moved some of my things to her apartment and offered to help with the rent. At the same time, I made sure Mama always had groceries, the house was clean, and she took her medication. There was no joy in my duties.

  Mama started phoning her sisters more often than she had in the past, and she began talking about going home to Jamaica. She wanted to take a last sea bath, visit Port Maria, drink coconut water, sit under a mango tree.

  “Everything turn out bad here,” she said. “Look pon Vittorio, him don’t even try to find work. Mi give him everything. Him just like him father, de tiefing, de womanizing, de night life. Still, him is mi responsibility. Ah tek him up when him was a baby and ah have to carry it through. Ah have business to fix, then ah want to go home.”

  She called Vittorio, Ciboney and me to a meeting. I think she wanted to let Vittorio know she was serious about leaving, but his mind was on his new girlfriend. He kept looking at his watch, and for a split second I saw Uncle Freddie sitting there. I felt a tear open up in my heart when I saw Mama look at him so lovingly.

  Vittorio didn’t say much. When she asked him what she should do with the house, he told her to do whatever she wanted. He said he wanted something new, a condominium, perhaps in Kensington Market or on the waterfront. Then he abruptly got up to leave.

  Later, Ciboney told me that his new girlfriend worked in a massage parlour and was the mother of three children. Vittorio had told Mama that she was a bank teller.

  Over the next few weeks Mama asked me several times, “What yuh think ah should do?” But she always answered her own question. She knew what she wanted and what was best for Vittorio. “Ah don’t want to sell de house. Mel wouldn’t want it so, and me don’t believe in dem something name condominium. Yuh cyaan buy house in de sky.”

  Just after Uncle Mel died, Mama had bought herself a plot in the same cemetery, still resigned to finishing her life in Canada. She’d paid in advance for her casket and funeral arrangements. So, when she asked me to get a refund, I knew she was serious about going home.

  She began her journey by giving away jewellery and personal possessions. She gave Ciboney a lovely gold chain and a single-band gold ring. Clothes she gave to less-fortunate church sisters, keeping only a few favourites. Then she called one more family meeting to find out what Vittorio’s intentions were. “I don’t want to take care of a house and garden,” he insisted. “I want a loft.”

  His wish was beyond Mama’s understanding, but she would do anything to please him. She agreed to sell the house and give him the money for a down payment, but only if he would clean out the basement and take away his old stereos, speaker boxes, car parts, electronic devices and other junk. Weeks went by and he did nothing.

  She kept up her correspondence with her sisters, promising them that she would soon be home. She told Peppie and Glory that she was moving back to Jamaica. They asked her to reconsider and move to Atlanta, but she was dead set against that idea.

  Ciboney, my hope and precious daughter, only fourteen years old, was pregnant. I didn’t find out until she was five months along, and my heart broke. I felt betrayed when I learned that she’d told Mama. Ciboney wouldn’t say who the father was. She wouldn’t confide in me at all.

  Things were happening very quickly in our family, and I wasn’t seeing Rose as often as she wanted. She complained and pressured me, and I felt as though everyone was testing me.

  Mama asked me to get someone to come in and clear out the basement so she could sell the house. I researched prices in the neighbourhood, discussed them with her and started contacting a few real estate agents. Uncle Peppie flew up from Atlanta to help me. We spent weeks preparing the house for sale and fixing up the yard. Uncle Peppie painted the kitchen and the hallway and had it ready for showing. The real estate agent and prospective buyers were in and out. Finally we had an offer. The day before Mama was to sign, she sent Ciboney to find Vittorio. He came almost immediately. They had a long private talk.

  On the day of the signing, Mama, Uncle Peppie, Ciboney and I sat down with the agent and the buyer at the kitchen table. Vittorio was nowhere to be found. The agent explained the procedure to Mama and handed her a pen. Right there, without consulting any of us, Mama said, “Ah not selling.” Uncle Peppie and I were stunned.

  “Mama?” I asked.

  “Not selling,” she repeated.

  We couldn’t bring her to her senses. The buyer and the agent left in frustration. I felt such rage. “Mama, what going on? Yuh know how much time I waste wid dis shit? Where yuh dearly beloved Vittorio? I’m sick and tired of this. Yuh seh Vittorio like him father and grandfather, but yuh mek him dat way,” I shrieked,
near tears.

  She sat there at the kitchen table and laughed at me. I was “delirious.” “Stark-raving mad.”

  “Waste your time?” she shouted. “Yuh know about time? Yuh know how much mi put in you?”

  Uncle Peppie got up from his chair and walked out the door. I went to my room and packed some clothes. On my way out, I heard Ciboney asking Mama if she wanted some tea and a slice of bread. On the street corner, I saw Uncle Peppie smoking a cigarette, something I’d never seen him do. He hugged me and we stood there holding on to each other for a long time. “Ah going back tomorrow,” he said, “on de first flight out.”

  Rose was at her place, waiting for me. “How did it go?” I burst into tears. She led me to the kitchen and made a pot of tea. My hands shook as I held the cup. I spent that night with Rose, and the next, and the night after that, determined to leave my grandmother’s house.

  Things were never the same again between Mama and me. Something was dead, but I couldn’t move on. They—she, Vittorio and Ciboney—were the family. I still did the cooking and cleaning and drove Mama to appointments. Listened to her complaints of Vittorio and her children and her lot in life while my life was tearing up like an old worn-out rag. Yet I stayed rooted.

  Ciboney gave birth to a daughter. I was with her at the hospital and I stifled tears as I held my grandchild. A little miracle. I looked into her fiery, screaming face and wondered at the cost of life.

  Mama found new energy now that she had a baby in the house. She could no longer move around or make baby food herself, but she issued instructions to me and Ciboney. Vittorio showed up more often now that the baby was here. He carried her around in his arms with such tenderness that I had to stop myself from wanting to like him. Ciboney named the child Maud, Mama’s middle name. That pained me, but then, Ciboney had never been only mine.

  I encouraged Ciboney to go back to school; she had dropped out during her pregnancy. She said she wasn’t ready. She wanted to take care of Maud full-time, and Mama backed her decision.

  Vittorio turned up whenever Mama summoned him. Ciboney knew where he spent his time and acted as the messenger. When he came by, Mama gave him money for gas. I bought the groceries for the house without asking for a penny and paid the utility bill. My beat-up, eight-year-old car had been no gift from her.

  My relationship with Rose was like a tulip bulb buried deep under snow. All I could do was wait, and hope, and believe in spring.

  With renewed vigour Mama again made plans to return to Jamaica. Her church people came to see her, sang and prayed with her, and she looked forward to their visits. She talked about Uncle Mel, how much she missed him and what a good man he was. She looked so tired, and her mood was changeable and hard to live with.

  One afternoon shortly after Mama had been complaining bitterly about Vittorio, he came home, bathed and put on a suit, white shirt and tie. Mama asked Ciboney to help her get dressed. She was in high spirits at the sight of Vittorio. In the afternoon light she looked the way she did back on the dead-end street, when we were getting ready to head off for the Ritz Theatre. She explained that they were going to see a lawyer. I watched them as they went through the door: mother and son.

  Later that night Vittorio joined us in a family prayer. I cursed myself for sitting in with them, but I did. Tired from her own scripture readings, Mama soon fell asleep.

  She was eager to leave Canada. Once again I’d become the worker bee, but this time I looked at it as buying my freedom. That was what I thought then, not knowing that I would never be free of her.

  Part Four

  HE WHO IS FREE OF FAULTS WILL NEVER DIE

  WE’D BEEN PACKING BOXES, barrels and suitcases for weeks. Glory came from Atlanta to help out. Grand-aunt Ruth had asked us to bring lots of food—the cost of food in the supermarkets was outrageous, she wrote—so we packed barrels with canned salmon, tuna, flour, sugar, rice, boxes of cake mix, cereal and crackers, along with detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, candles, pots, plates and clothing. We made arrangements for a shipper to pick up Mama’s bed, television set and VCR, commode chair, dresser, washing machine and dryer, a new fridge for Grand-aunt Ruth, a hairdryer for Aunt Joyce, car parts for Cousin Ivan and a new sewing machine for Cousin Icie. Glory and I would wrap and pack late into the night.

  Mama couldn’t do much except sit and give orders about what was to be put in barrels. She wouldn’t listen when we begged her to go rest.

  “Mi waan fi know what exactly going in de barrel,” she insisted.

  As usual, Vittorio was hardly ever at home. The day before Glory left, when the barrels were full and we needed help to lift them out of the kitchen onto the front porch, Mama complained bitterly. “Dat blasted bwoy, him should be here now helping. Instead him a walk street or a follow woman skirt. Just like him father. Him call and promise fi come and help, and up till now mi nuh see de wretch. Not even him own room him will tidy up. Rat and roach a fight fi space down dere.”

  Glory gave her a piece of advice: “Yuh shoulda kick de bwoy out long time. Yuh don’t need to put up wid him shit, Mama, yuh too old fi dis.”

  Mama struggled for an answer. “Ah, mi dear, it nuh so easy. Old-time people use to say, ‘What nuh dead, nuh dash way,’ and none a we know what direction life will tek, only de Lord know, and him nuh worse dan any other bwoy.”

  My mother and I exchanged looks.

  “Come, Molly, mek we walk down to de lake. Ah need to get some air,” Glory said.

  We walked out to the street and across the bridge over Lakeshore Boulevard to Sunnyside Beach. We strolled along the shore, the July sun glittering like false gold in our faces, the lake water dull and sluggish, mirroring our mood.

  “Dat Mama need fi go see a head doctor,” she started off. “For something wrong wid her head. All she do is cuss de bwoy and then in de same breath defend him.”

  “Him can’t do no wrong,” I said, sighing.

  “She ruin so much people life. Give out bad advice and defend people failures. She shoulda leave Vittorio in de Children’s Aid. Him mighta come out to something with adoptive parents. Just like she never have any right fi tek yuh out of mi house.”

  Her last words angered me, but I didn’t say anything. It was one thing to talk about Vittorio and quite another to suggest Mama needed a psychiatrist and to compare me to Vittorio. After all, Glory had driven me from her home, and I had made something of myself, become the first in our family to go to university.

  “Look pon Ciboney, pickney having pickney, and all she do every day is dress up and idle.” She paused and then asked, “Anybody know who de father is yet?”

  “No,” I said in barely a whisper.

  “Well, so it continue, another generation down de drain.” Just shut up, I thought. You should be one to talk.

  “Yuh can vex all yuh want, but someone have to talk de truth.” She stared out at the lake. A heavy silence floated between us.

  I made my face look like a stone and said coolly, “We should get back home. I have to start dinner.”

  Glory left for Atlanta the next day, and Mama continued to complain about Vittorio.

  “Look pon de sink how it full a dutty dish and glass. As him use dem, so him just dash dem in and lef de house.”

  When it wasn’t the dishes, it was the garbage, or money he stole from her hope chest, which of course he denied. One evening I came home from work to a mouthful of anger.

  “Yuh see Vittorio outside?” she asked, sitting on a chair in the kitchen, crippled with arthritis. “Him just leave here wid him friends. Look out dere pon de kitchen how dem lef it. Full a dutty dish, and mi stove, look how de water and oil spill over, de garbage never tek out dis morning. Kool-Aid spill in de fridge and him nuh wipe it up. Dem use things from de cupboard and dem nuh put it back. Dem is a dutty set a dawg, and him tief out mi money.”

  Her smoker’s cough cracked in her chest. She spit the saliva into a rag she carried in the pocket of her dress and went on. “And as fi Ciboney
, she dress from early dis morning, dress up de poor likkle baby like dolly and gawn a street. Mi beg her fi clean up de washroom, and she seh when she come back. Of course yuh know dat mean when street lock down. Ah only wish ah was stronger in mi body, ah would just tek de baby from her.… Ah just dying fi leave here. Ah can’t tek it anymore.” She sighed in frustration.

  She had gotten smaller over the years, and her face was lined and haggard. Her wrinkled hands were deep in the pockets of her old lady’s dress.

  “Mama is okay. Try to go rest. I will clean up,” I said. I helped to set her hands steady on her walker and she went to her bedroom.

  Despite my disgust at having to clean up Vittorio’s mess, I pitied my grandmother. Looking back, I think loneliness and her lack of control over our lives drove her back to Jamaica. None of us had measured up to what she wanted. She used to say her Bible and God were her only companions, but even those companions could not take away the pain that often shadowed her face. I prepared her meals, washed her clothes, did the shopping and picked up her pills, but I didn’t spend a lot of time comforting her. When Ciboney was home, she cut Mama’s toenails, read her blood pressure and entertained her with baby Maud. Vittorio graced her with occasional smiles.

  It brought Mama a little pleasure to sit at the kitchen door and watch me work in the garden. I planted her favourite annuals: strawberry begonias, scented geraniums, impatiens and dahlias. The forget-me-nots, purple irises, lilies-of-the-valley and large pink peonies were among her favourite perennials. I tended her hybrid, pink musk roses, which climbed a trellis in the front yard. Sometimes I read to her on weekends and treated her to take-out Chinese food. But there was never any real thanks for anything I did, and it was painfully clear that in her heart she wished Vittorio were the one helping her.

  I remember, too, a weekend I spent with Rose. Ciboney had promised to stay home in case Mama needed help. Rose and I had just finished eating a delicious, candlelit supper. The mood was light and fun and so was the music. I placed a rose between my lips and was taking backward steps toward the bedroom. Rose mockingly followed, her nose lightly touching the rose. When the phone rang, she said, “Let the machine get it. This is much more fun.” Later she played back the message.